Software engineering, music, and general geekery

Comfort Curve Keyboard 3000 bug on Windows 10

I’ve been using the Microsoft Comfort Curve Keyboard 3000 for a number of years, and it’s mostly served me very well. However, since upgrading to Windows 10, the keyboard has shown an annoying bug. If I leave it for a few seconds without pressing anything then the keyboard seems to shut down. If any keys are held down at that point then the OS doesn’t notice when they get released. The result is it thinks the keys are still held until I pressed and release them again. Sami Korhonen has made a YouTube video demonstrating the same problem.

The easy way to observe this happening is to make sure Num Lock or Caps Lock is enabled. The corresponding light on the keyboard will initially be illuminated. If no keys are pressed for a few seconds, the light goes out. Pressing any keys makes it come back on again.

This causes occasional problems in every day computer tasks, such as the system thinking you’re still holding Ctrl. This results in applications thinking you’re pressing a keyboard shortcut when you intended to type text. It becomes a major problem for playing PC games though. For example, it can cause you to end up running straight into a trap or enemy fire etc because the computer thinks you’re still holding a movement key.

Solution

The problem seems to be caused by Windows shutting down the device to save power (although I suspect it’s not saving very much!). Thankfully, there seems to be an easy way to fix it:

Right-click the Windows button and select “Control Panel”.

Under “Hardware and Sound”, select “View devices and printers”.

Double-click “Comfort Curve Keyboard 3000”.

Open the “Hardware” tab.

Double-click “USB Input Device”.

Click the “Change Settings” button.

Open the “Power Management” tab.

Uncheck the option labelled “Allow the computer to turn off this device to save power”.

Click OK.

Repeat from step 5 for any other item labelled “USB Input Device”.

Click OK.

Close the Control Panel.

This certainly seems to have solved the problem for me, and from what I’ve read online, it sounds like other people have had success following similar steps.